King Christian V of Denmark (1646–99), for example, shortly before his death, commissioned Schalcken to paint Holy Family, which arrived in Copenhagen in 1700 and is still preserved there; Thierry Beherman, Godfried Schalcken (Paris,1988), no. 5. It was not known until recently that the king also had his portrait painted, as emerges from Samuel Sylvius, Gedigten (‘s-Gravenhage, 1729), 2:183, in which the portrait is honored with a four-line verse: “Christianus de Vijfde, Koning van Denemarken en Norwegen, Door den Hofschilder G. Schalke. Dus maalt een Schalke hand den Koning Christiaan, / Wijs, deugdzaam, dapper, kloek en goed, tot heil der Noren. / Euroope en Asië zien ’t beeld verwondert aan. / Geen vorst op aarde is zo bestendig ’t rijk beschoren” (Christian V, King of Denmark and Norway, by the court painter G. Schalcken. So an impish hand paints King Christian / Wise, virtuous, brave, strong, and good, to the benefit of the Norwegians. / Europe and Asia look at his image with wonder. / No king on earth is blessed with so solid an empire). It was no doubt these commissions that led the painter’s widow to refer to him incorrectly as the Danish court painter in her will of 6 July 1742 (with a codicil of 13 October 1743): “Francoisia van Diemen, weduwe van Godefridus Schalcken, in leven kunstschilder en hofschilder van Z. K. H. van Denemarken” (Francoisia van Diemen, widow of Godefridus Schalcken, in life an artist and court painter to His Royal Highness of Denmark). The Hague, Gemeentearchief, Protocol book of the notary Jacob Spex, inv. 2654.

Marco Chiarini, I dipinti olandesi del Seicento e del Settecento (Rome, 1989), 511–23, inv. nos. 76.248, 76.250, 76.252, and 76.253 with illustrations; the inv. nos. 76.249 (copy after the painting in Dresden) and 76.251 are not by the master’s hand.

John B. Knipping, De iconografie van de contra-reformatie in de Nederlanden, 2 vols. (Hilversum, 1939–40), 2:96–109. At this time, in fact, the influence of the Counter-Reformation was overpowering in the Palatinate. Until 1685 the Electors Palatine had been among the leaders of the Protestant faction in Germany, but Charles II’s death without issue in that year meant the extinction of the Protestant branch of the Wittelsbach-Simmern family. A dispute erupted over the succession, which was settled in favor of the Catholic branch of Wittelsbach-Neuburg. The new Catholic Elector Palatine was Johann Wilhelm’s father, who did his best to make his largely Protestant subjects return to the fold of the mother Church, a policy that his son and successor pursued with increased zeal after 1690.

John B. Knipping, De iconografie van de contra-reformatie in de Nederlanden, 2 vols. (Hilversum, 1939–40), 1:62 and 80.

Thierry Beherman, Godfried Schalcken (Paris,1988), nos. 15–24. Remarkably enough, it was a representation of Mary Magdalene in the collection of Diego Duarte in Antwerp that ushered in Schalcken’s international reputation. As early as 1687, the Swede Nicodemus Tessin the Younger (1654–1728) observed, during his visit to the collection: “aber sonderlich schön wahr die Sta Magdalena, so von dem reflex einer Lampen gantz eclairiret wurde, dessent gleichen ich nimmer artiger gemahlet gesehen, der es gemacht hat heisst Schalcken undt wohnet in Dort” (but the Saint Mary Magadalene was exceptionally beautiful, as she was completely lit by the reflection of a lamp, something I have never seen painted more felicitously; the one who did it is called Schalcken and lives in Dordrecht); Gustaf Upmark, “Ein Besuch in Holland 1687,” Oud Holland 18, no. 1 (1900): 202. For the inventory of Duarte’s paintings, see Erik Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw (Brussels, 1984–2009), 9:154–64; for the Mary Magdalene by Schalcken, see 9:164, no. 192.

“Und wie E. Ch. D. ihne wohl kennen, würdt er davon nicht vil nachlassen.” For the letter from Von Wiser, see T. Levin, “Geiträge zur Geschichte der Kunstbestrebungen in dem Hause Pfalz-Neuburg,” in Beiträge zur Geschichte des Niederrheins: Jahrbuch des Düsseldorfer Geschichtsvereins 22 (1910): 34. Just how high this amount was emerges from the fact that in those days 800 guilders was the highest price fetched at auction by a work of Schalcken. Jonckheere states that the average price for a work by Schalcken was 188 guilders, as evidenced by his database of 41 works. The mean was 130 guilders. Of all the artists whose work was sold at auction, Schalcken is thus the 36th most expensive painter on the list; Koenraad Jonckheere, The Auction of King William’s Paintings, 1713: Elite International Art Trade at the End of the Dutch Golden Age (Philadelphia, 2008), 215, 217.

On his stay in Düsseldorf, see K. Strauven, Ueber künstlerisches Leben und Wirken in Düsseldorf bis zur Düsseldorfer Maler-Schule unter Direktor Schadow (Düsseldorf, 1862), 20. Schalcken had gone to Düsseldorf to work. While there he painted at least three portraits, including the portrait of Anna Maria Louisa de’ Medici (1667–1743), second wife of Elector Johann Wilhelm, and the portrait of Theresia Catharina Lubomirska (1683–1712), the wife of his younger brother and successor, Karl Philipp of the Palatinate; Thierry Beherman, Godfried Schalcken (Paris, 1988), 406, no. 289 (dated 1703, oil on canvas, 131 x 98 cm) and 407, no. 330a (dated 1703, oil on canvas, 118.8 x 88.4 cm). Another portrait painted at that time was a likeness of a Count of Bylandt, which E. W. Moes reported in 1892 as being in the possession of a descendant, along with the curious correspondence between the artist and the patron; see Gerrardys H. Veth “Aanteekeningen omtrent eenige Dordrechtsche schilders. XXXII. Godefridus Schalcken,” Oud Holland, 10 (1892): 5. It is not known if either the portrait or the letters are still extant. The only heir and grandson of the owner, Willem Frederik Lodewijk, Count of Bylandt (1896–1990), informed me in writing in 1986 that he had never heard of an ancestral portrait by Schalcken in his family’s possession.